9-25 IAN Insurance Claims

 Crop insurance losses begin to mount amid drought

According to the Associated Press, Thousands of farmers are filing insurance claims this year after drought and triple-digit temperatures burned up crops across the nation. Some experts are predicting record insurance losses on taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance and there is an expectation that $25 billion in crop insurance claims will be filed by growers across the nation, driven primarily by one of the worst droughts in the U.S. decades.  Again, according to the Associated Press, the loss estimate is based on a loss ratio of $2.50 for every dollar paid in premium.

It is absolutely crazy how weather patterns can vary as a function of geographic location. For example, in the Northwest, and specifically in the state of Washington, it wasn’t extreme drought that caused heavy damage, it was the polar opposite, hail.  Here is Jo Lynne Seufer, spokesperson for the USDA’s Risk Management Agency for the Northwest. “We don’t have the drought compared to the rest of the United States, some of our losses up here, particularly in Washington state are hail. Those of the most significant losses we are getting appear. I wouldn’t say record losses but they were bad enough that the apples were bruised and looked like they had been beaten by a broom.”